Stoke seems a million – ok, 5,000 – miles away from California, but this combo are keen to take you with them on a getaway from the not-so-sunny English Midlands. They also hanker after time travel, to the ’60s, and the Laurel Canyon scene – birthplace to acts such as Love, Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds – is a considerable influence on their summery, jangly pop.
However, they are firmly grounded in the UK’s less-than-bright realities, lyrically at odds with that flower power optimism – “England is drowning in dark anxiety” the reality check for the pacy jangle of ‘Loose Canyon’ while ‘I Don’t Believe (in the Summer of Love)’ is self-explanatory – “you blink an eye and then it’s gone”.
The contrast between their home and their sunlit uplands is never more evident in the pacy-country-tinged ‘We’ which will have the listener hankering for a roadtrip with Gabriel’s Dawn on the stereo.
Available via Bandcamp, ‘Gabriel’s Dawn’ is out now. This article originally appeared in the Sunderland Echo.